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National Geographic : 1960 Sep
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(P) NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY shore, the little band of primitive humans realized by dawn that they would have to retreat. Gathering their meager belongings, they went to rouse a youth of perhaps 18 who had lain ill for some time. One look told them that the flood could threaten him no more; he had died in the night. Quickly his companions covered the body with brush to protect it from the hyenas and other carnivores feeding near by. Then they fled to high ground. Inexorably the lake crept over the camp site, engulfing the body, together with many stone tools abandoned in the flight and the bones of small animals the hunters had eaten. Higher and higher the water rose, depositing a layer of silt over all. Again and again during what we call plu vial periods - eras of increased rainfall prob ably coinciding with ice ages farther toward the poles - the lake rose and fell, adding layer on layer of silt and sand on top of the camp site. Finally the water vanished, leaving the body entombed under several hundred feet of sediments that had hardened to rock. Earthquakes Opened Door to the Past There our story might have ended but for one of those quirks of nature that sometimes seem to do man's work for him. Some. 100,000 years ago - when the bones, of our Stone Age man had lain buried for half a million years - violent 'earthquakes con vulsed the area, fracturing and reshaping. 423
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